Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers Imagine a Better Oblivion

A conversation with the pair about their new project, Better Oblivion Community Center.

Better Oblivion Community Center, the new joint project by Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst, appeared out of nowhere earlier this month, like an apparition, the ghost of Pitchfork Best New Musics past. At 10 songs and clocking in under 38 minutes, the album is an exercise in concision, blending the melodic and narrative sensibilities of Bridgers, 24, and Oberst, 38, in unexpected ways. (See: "Exception to the Rule," a pulsing jam that's sung entirely in unison and has some of the residual vapors of Digital Ash in a Digital Urn.)

Last week, I met up with the duo in the atrium of the Ludlow Hotel in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Phoebe came in balancing a tray of coffees on her forearm and had lightning-purple hair; Conor's shoulder-length mane was equally luscious. Other guests probably thought we were about to shoot the world's indiest Pantene commercial. And since with these things there’s no telling, we just have to wait and see...the conversation went to some zany places: We talked about the mechanics of making a project like this, the weirdness of professional musician come-thru culture in Los Angeles, oat milk, and more.

GQ: Do you guys have a preferred abbreviation for the project name yet?

Phoebe Bridgers: We've actually talked about this, where we didn't want people to call it BOCC. I think we want Better Oblivion. But I've heard my manager call it the Community Center, which is...

Conor Oberst: That's weird.

Phoebe: ...and he'll be like, "Well, you're going to be in Portland with the Community Center!” That’s kind of sick.

I love that you guys sing together a bunch on the record. It has this effect where it sorta untangles the music from a lot of those really gendered, romantic tropes that you get in other songs. Is that something you like…

[Phoebe reaches across the marble coffee table and high-fives Conor.]

Phoebe: [laughs] No, we talked about that. We talked about how we didn't want it to be a back-and-forth. We've gotten some press requests that are like, "What are your favorite duet albums?" And we're like, "It's not a duet album." We wanted to sing pretty much in unison the whole time.

The project doesn’t really feel like a departure, as it very much had elements of both you guys in it. Is that a challenge at all, in terms of combining songwriting sensibilities?

Conor: We wrote all the songs together, and I think because of that, I'm glad that it sounds like that to you. We’ve sang on each other's stuff before. I think there are obviously a few times on the record where one of us is singing by ourselves, but I would say like 80 percent of the time we're singing together. I like when the two voices become that one voice, and I think there's... I'm trying to think of a good band...

Phoebe: X.

Conor: Yeah, exactly. When you think about a band, you think of a voice, but it's really two voices you're thinking of. You know what I mean? But in your head it's like, "Oh, it's that sound." I think we kind of do that.

So there was a real mindfulness of trying to do something progressive-ish that didn't feel predictable.

Phoebe: Yeah, there was a mindfulness, but I feel like it did come late. I feel like we didn't really sit down with each other and be like, "Okay, we're going to try our hardest not to write duet songs." We sat down and wrote all the songs, top to bottom, together, and that's just what happened, and we thought that was cool.

You two were buddies before this. Who reached out to whom to get Better Oblivion started?

Phoebe: I love this story. We met through mutual friends, and then Conor took me on tour. The first real show we played together was this big-ticketed show in L.A., and he played this Replacements song that was one of my favorites. I think it's a lot of people's favorite, but it's this destroyer of a Replacements song, “Here Comes a Regular.” And I came up to him after the show. I saw it two nights in a row, because I went to the night before, where I didn't open...

Conor: There were two shows?

Phoebe: Yeah! Remember?

Conor: Um, yes.

Phoebe: A different person opened, but I went the night before, you played it twice, I cried both times, and I, after the show, was like, "Dude, that song fucks me up. I love The Replacements. I fucking love The Replacements. That's awesome!"

And then a week into our Euro tour that we did together, Conor came up to me after a show and was like, "Look, I know you hate The Replacements, but I really want to start a band that's like The Replacements with you."

Conor: Our band sounds nothing like The Replacements.

Phoebe: That's not true. The Replacements don't sound like The Replacements half the time! But we wouldn't write the first song for another six months or something.

Conor: The first song we wrote together [Ed. note: It was "Didn't Know What I Was in For"], it was more of like, "Oh, let's [try this] together and have the experiment of writing a song. It could be for anyone's record, or my record, or her record, or a third party's record—

Phoebe: We didn't even talk about it. We just started writing it. We didn't talk about having a band or anything. I have this other joke, because I've seen this happen with [Conor] a bunch, where you want to collab with everyone. He'll start a bunch of fake bands all the time, so I had no idea our band was real until, like, five songs in.

I also have an idea for a compilation album [where] Conor has to do one song with every band he started—like Trey from Phish. That's my favorite one. He, like, fake started a band with Trey from Phish.

Conor: You know, it's like if you're staying up late with someone, hanging out, [stoner voice] "What’s up, man, we should start a new thing..."

That's like media people and starting a podcast.

Conor: Yeah, exactly.

Phoebe: That's like me and starting a podcast.

Did you know tonally what vibe you were going for from the beginning? Or were you more like let’s just try a bunch of shit?

Conor: Yeah, I mean, she always is doing that with... I feel like there's more of a co-writing culture in L.A. where people get together and write songs and give them to other people or whatever. I feel like she's always kind of doing that.

Phoebe: There's a shitty side of it, but it feels like...

Conor: That's never been a part of my world [in Omaha], but it's cool.

Phoebe: When I was like 17, [I had to work with] like Linda Perry, and it's just a very weird L.A. thing. And then someone from some production company—like Warner/Chappell, because they were partners with Elektra Records and Elektra was like up in my grill when I was a kid—they set me up on so many horrible writing sessions, where it'd be like, you show up and you fucking don't know what the person is like.

You don't have to name other names, but do you have another example of one of those awkward experiences?

Conor: I actually don't know if he's going to put it on his record or not.

We don't have to tell Trey from Phish.

Conor: [laughs] I wrote with a pop person who still might put it on his record. I'm hoping, you know?

Gotta secure the bag.

Conor: Yeah. Mailbox money, you know? I would love to have that gig. Dan Wilson, is that his name? That wrote all the Adele songs? He wrote that…what was his band? [he starts singing] “Clo-sing tiiiiime.”

Phoebe: Semisonic.

Phoebe, did you have a favorite Bright Eyes song before you met Conor?

Phoebe: Dude, every day I have a new different favorite.

Conor: The one you used to cover on tour, it was actually at that show. At that church show, I was watching you play. She started playing the song and I was like, "This sounds tight."

It was like half way through the song, like, "Wait a second," because it was truly such a deep cut, one I'd totally forgotten about. [Note: It ended up being "Bad Blood."]

I feel like you are both really great at individually having strong visuals and narrative structure in your songs. What were the mechanics of that kind of track writing in the same room?

Conor: I think that it was interesting for me, because a lot of times, if I'm writing by myself, I can have a train of thought or some kind of linear logic to my lyrics, but it might not be there for the listener—I feel like my shit ties together in ways that make sense to me, but maybe not always to someone else.

So when doing this, having to articulate that verbally, to another human, throughout the whole time while we're making the song, it was cool because it made the ideas crystallize more, where you had to know what you were talking about a little bit.

Phoebe: There was a lot of me talking to you about something, and you do this thing with your mouth shape, where you go like...

Conor: I do?

Phoebe: [laughs] Your eyes glaze over. [When I write] it's very obvious that I'm writing with an instrument. But I feel like we'd be having a conversation and you'd be like, "Uh huh, yeah," and then I'm like, "Oh, wait, he's coming up with lyrics. That's what's happening."

Like you’re watching the computer writing a song in real time. Was there anything in observing each other's songwriting creative process that you were surprised to learn about each other?

Phoebe: I was really surprised that Conor does a lot of character study. Not surprised, necessarily. [She looks at Conor] I was surprised about the extent to which it goes; obviously, a lot of your songs aren't about you, but a lot...I don't know. Your songwriting, it's super visual, and you have tapped into a certain thing that good writing does: It puts you exactly in a very specific scenario. It is crazy to me how much it just comes straight from your imagination.

I kind of have to like... I'm afraid to watch TV at the same time as people around me, because they'll be like, "Oh, and then you wrote that thing that was what happened on the show we watched."

You want to hide your references.

Phoebe: You know what I mean? I don't really want them to know where it came from.

Conor: Your songs are just Gilmore Girls episodes.

"Why is everyone talking so fast?" What was a recording day like for you guys? Would you hunker down for hours?

Conor: We like a good break.

Phoebe: We love a good break. Lots of snacking. We joke—the only other person we really wrote songs with ever, who ever has a real inside view, even when he wasn't writing with us, was my friend Christian Lee Hutson. And he would joke that all we do all day is eat, when we're trying to write songs. Because you get a little bit uncomfortable or weird, then you get up and go to the kitchen and get snacks.

Phoebe: Health-Ade Kombucha literally sent us a shitload of Health-Ade while we were writing.

Conor: Shhh, turns out that stuff's not that great. Oh, wait, you like it? Uh, it's great, we love it, Health-Ade!

Gut health is important.

Conor: I like kombucha, but that brand is like not bubbly bubbly enough.

Phoebe: It's so fucking bubbly. Oh, another fake sponsor of us is Spire. We had to sing something, and I made a mic stand out of kale chips. I had so many boxes of kale chips that I made a mic stand for us to sing and double track ourselves on the counter.

What kind of kale chips were they?

Phoebe: Fuck, what brand? I think I even made a joke about this already. At the beginning of the year and tagged whatever brand it was, but I don't remember. Let me, wait, I need to throw them out. [She takes out her phone] Also, oat milk. I love oat milk.

Shout out to oat milk.

Phoebe: Okay, yeah, I found it! Made in Nature kale chips.

Conor: [sings a ditty into the recorder] Made-in-Na-ture kale, chips!

Phoebe: I think that artists have a responsibility to stand up for what they believe in and use their special platform to inspire people...and I think Oatly should be sold in Whole Foods.

Conor: What do you want?

Phoebe: They don't sell oat milk in Whole Foods!

They don't? I feel like they have it at my bodega now.

Phoebe: Exactly. It's so many places. Except for Whole Foods.

This is a weird question, and it might be just my myopic Brooklyn bubble, but I feel like feeling stuff-music is really having a moment right now. This might be too meta, but is that something you guys have noticed at all in the reception to this project, or anything?

Conor: [Looks me dead in the eyes] I've been answering that question for a long time, my friend. I mean, I remember the first time I heard the word emo. I was on tour with my high school band in California. Someone was like, "Oh, do you play whatever club or a DIY space?" And they're like, "Oh, you should play this other place, that's where all the emo bands play." I was like, "What?" So I guess we were playing emo music without knowing that's what it was called, but like...

Phoebe: Pull quote: "Conor Oberst doesn't know what emo is."

Conor: All I'm saying is, if it means emotional, then unless you're Devo, shouldn't that be all music, kinda? I don't know. I guess as far as, if there's a Zeitgeist moment where it's cool to be fucking feely again... [Looks at Phoebe] You could answer that better than I could, maybe?

Phoebe: Well, because Mac DeMarco, Girlpool, there are a bunch of bands that are very separate from the up-front emotion shit, but I do feel I actually might be too young to think of a time when it was different. I feel like I've always looked for music like this... Maybe it wasn't the most popular, but there's a reason Julien Baker slid in and fucking nailed something that everybody wanted to hear, that even hardcore kids wanted to hear.

Is there a moment on the album that you would isolate as particularly special to you on a personal level? Something you notice more?

Conor: I hadn't heard the record for a while. We listened to the songs to remember what they sound like to play them.

Phoebe: Conor doesn't really look at the Internet. I look at the Internet, and it's fun seeing what people's favorites are. Julien [Baker] texted me that she wants to mosh to “Big Black Heart.” Forgot about that.

Conor: James Felice texted me that "Chesapeake" was fucking him up. That's what the text said: “ ‘Chesapeake’’s really fucking me up.” I was like, sick.

I don't know whether you read it or heard it, the thing about...was it a college that they surveyed? Like, if you tell the people what's popular...

Phoebe: I think it was maybe a podcast, Hidden Brain. Do you know Hidden Brain? It's an NPR podcast, it's really good. They do a study where if you give everybody a shit ton of songs and ask what the Top 40 is, but nobody knows what anybody else thinks, it's—

Conor: Totally different.

Phoebe: ...totally different. There's no through line. And if they tell everybody what everybody else's favorites are, they become the same.

Conor: Yeah, it slowly becomes the same list, because you're reinforcing what other people like.

You should just tell different interviewers different tracks.

Phoebe: So I think that's what's exciting about this album, is just getting it to everybody all at once has made me like different songs for different reasons.

Conor: Phoebe also has another great idea for a podcast, which is just two people talking about something that they kind of know shit about, but don't really.

Phoebe: It's like conversations that happen in the van, or whatever...

Conor: I think it's a great idea for a podcast. But you can't look anything up, and it has to be two people just being like—

Phoebe: It's mostly they're riffing on very Google-able things that they argue about for like 15 minutes. Like, "No, dude, Tom Petty—that record was from like whatever year.” Like, a fact that people are disputing.

Conor: Going back and forth. There's an obvious answer, but they're just floundering.

Phoebe: Yeah, I don't know, maybe it just resolves with them Googling it. Or just never finding out. Like the listener has to Google it.